Wireless communication networks have gained widespread use in recent years. Among the commonly used forms of wireless networks are those that implement versions of Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) standard 802.11 (e.g., 802.11a, 802.11b, 802.11g, 802.11n), WI-FI, GSM, and Bluetooth. Among the design issues associated with such networks are range and reliability. In particular, there is a push in the industry to continually improve both the range and reliability of such networks. A related characteristic is throughput, which tends to have an inverse relationship to range and reliability.
One way to improve the range of a wireless network is to increase the transmission power of one or more nodes on the network. However, at least in the case of many wireless networks, regulations limit the amount of power that a node can use to transmit. Accordingly, another technique that has been used to improve the range of wireless networks is mesh networking.
A mesh network is a network in which each node on the network acts as an independent router. Intermediate nodes are used as relays for multi-hop routing. Additionally, mesh networking improves the reliability of a network, because a mesh network can dynamically adjust the routes between nodes to circumvent broken, blocked, or poorly-performing links along the path between a source node and a destination node. As a result, mesh networks are self-healing, in that they can still operate even when a node breaks down or a connection fails.
Despite the above advances, there remains substantial room for improvement in range, reliability and throughput of wireless networks, particularly wireless mesh networks.